The Language of Flowers
by oiseaus
Summary: A symbolic summary of Mary & Matthew's relationship, I think...


**The Language of Flowers**

Their love was a fragile infant seedling, planted in the midst of the garden of receding chaos. It hadn't been expected, but later they thought perhaps it had fallen from the sky and nestled itself under brown, soft earth and trampled autumn leaves, waiting until it was brave enough to bear itself to the weak spring light. Yet she stamped it firmly down one afternoon with a black boot and horse's hooves before the innocent, well-meaning shoot ever had a chance to emerge. A yellow carnation.

On a dark, cold, black night she trod on the flowered coriander, breaking its delicate light petals, and it changed her. No longer was she growing in the company of daisies and white-roses. Now she knew the black rose, she knew the unwanted passion of an orange lily, and she made it her mission to protect herself, to protect the others. She spun a winter web to wrap around her slight flower frame, and hoped desperately that no one would ask her to unwind herself. Especially him. Oh, God, not him! He was the good-natured mullein to her peony's shame. No, anyone but him!

But years passed, and she began to feel a steady pressing on her heart, the secret growing too large and heavy for her to carry alone and causing her to toss and turn in her soft plot of earth when the sun sunk behind wafting trees and gentle hills. Her name defined her as 'bitter', but she was far from it. No, those who knew her best, like he did, called her by its second meaning: 'beloved'. _Was it too late_? she worried to herself, weaving her fingers in her lap until they cried out for her to calm them. Could she promise herself to him knowing that a lie would push its ugly head out of the ground and grow around them, invasive and weedy, a reminder only visible to her of what she had done? No, it was impossible. She asked for her white clover promise back. She could not be sure. She loved him like a yellow tulip, hopelessly, and braved her heart for the storm that would surely follow.

The flower bed of the world was weeded. Gunshots and the soot smell of the killing powder dulled the once bright flower bed. Flowers were plucked unceremoniously up, grasses cut down, sturdy soil becoming mud under torrential downpours, all by those who thought they knew what they were doing. They thought they understood the ways of gardening, but they were foolish and unaware, and now lovers were parted, children were left fatherless, and wives nursed bleeding hearts.  
They were foolish! They let the creeping willow's roots become peppered with daffodils of uncertainty, of love unrequited, and they found safety elsewhere. Anywhere but with each other.

And then it was too late, they had done this to themselves. They were the rain lilies, thinking, I love you back, I must atone for my sins, I will never forget you, over and over again desperately in their minds while their hearts screamed red carnations and not a single word crossed their lips. They belonged to others. They had made their choice, as much as it pained him to see his good-luck gardenia, his noble thistle with that odious other. Yet he had his, his sweetbriar, delicate and lovely in her simplicity.

But she could not compare with the dark dahlia, that strong orchid that would always grow again in the back garden of his mind and heart; for now the two were interwoven. Not only his mind and heart, but hers as well. Twine pulled them together, and purple hyacinth vine spread over and around them, binding them together even as they remained promised to others. Later, they wondered if perhaps the curse had done it, when the coral colored sweetbrier wilted and departed from this world. And then, in time, the darker flower freed herself from anyone's grasp and desperately spilled forth the truth to her forget-me-not.

-_You would despise me…_

-_I never could despise you…_

And they let it blossom. Finally, after years of fumbling feet stamping out beginnings of flowers, they could let their garden run wild with red roses and carnations, sweet honeysuckle, balsam, and aster. It ran unfettered, without any hands to tend it, and now they really were one person. They married, they loved, they were not mindful of their garden. It didn't matter now. The only thing that mattered was the devastatingly beautiful scent of thousands of pollen-heavy petals and swaying flowers drifting up and around them, filling their nostrils with the intoxicating perfume of this. Just this. Just now. Just this love, this moment.

They were overjoyed when they learnt of what was to come -their precious celandine, their iris, their laurestine. And he came, a cherished, small gift they almost felt they did not deserve after all their folly. This tiny bud of life was beloved, like his mother's name spelled out, from the very beginning. Even in those few first treasured moments, the realization that the strength and magnitude of the love of two had manifested itself into its real and solid proof was humbling and glorious.

-_I can never be happy with anyone else as long as you walk the earth…_

But it was he who left first. No one had expected it, as it happened rather violently, a plant stamped out of its life with one misplaced footstep. And when they told her in gentle, soothing voices, of the impossible truth, she felt a twig snap inside of her orchid, dahlia self -one she never really knew she had until it had broken and the sharp ends of it poked painfully through her ribs.

-_Such good luck!_

Their child cried, their amaranth, their primrose representing their eternal love...he cried first, before any of them, as if his fragile heart beating against his mother's breast knew of the heartbreak that would soon plague her.

-_We're cursed, you and I…_

It was so new, and she was so unpracticed, and no one was there to help her, at least not in the moment when the infant cried against her, and so she shushed him, she kissed his cheeks and brushed thumbs over them, she leant him her finger to grasp firmly to, and she occupied herself fully with this new extension of her own being. This life formed from two others. This. Just this.

"I love you, so terribly much," Mary whispered as he quieted. And it was blissfully easy, she had learnt that now. How devastating, how inexplicable, how ferocious, how deadly, and how incredible love could be.

* * *

_A/N: Did any of that make any sense? Probably not. If it did, let me know! I'm playing around with symbolism, and this is what happened. I published it on tumblr, but I think it's far too long for there so I'm just putting it up here to see if people understand what was going through my head at 4h this morning..._


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